The idea for this wonderful combination of willow weaving and sandpit came when PPAG realized that the Museum Quarter’s request for a temporary summer sand play area would be problematic without some shade (limitations always lead to the best designs, don’t they?).

In conjuction with Simon Oberhammer and Stefanie Meyer, they developed a structure in which living willow branches are rooted in a bag of humus underneath the sand, and then horizontally interwoven with one-year-old willow sticks to form an onion-shaped play house that can ‘grow’ atop asphalt!

‘Kagome’ is a reference to both a Japanese children’s song, and a weaving pattern in Japanese basketry.

Kagome, kagome, the bird in the cage,
when will you come out?
In the evening of the dawn,
the crane and turtle slipped.
Who stands right behind you now?